A Lin-win situation — except for the Rockets

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Lover of social media that he is, Daryl Morey took to twitter to mock the general manager that let Jeremy Lin go.

“We should have kept (Lin). Did not know he was this good,” Morey wrote during a Twitter chat session on Thursday. “Anyone who says they knew misleading U.”

Morey was doing a twitter chat, Shane Battier style, when he was asked to own the mistake, inspiring him to write that he screwed up.

He later offered praise for the Linsation himself, writing “Finally, really happy for [Lin]. Very hard working, nice, & humble. He has a great, great future.”

He is also a great story, undrafted out of Harvard, released by his hometown Warriors, in and out of the D-League and the Rockets training camp before becoming the post-Super Bowl darling of the New York media machine.

In the past three games, all Knicks wins, he has averaged 25.3 points and 8.3 assists. He will be all over ESPN tonight. He even has been able to move off his brother’s couch (his story just gets better and better) into David Lee’s New York apartment.

For the Rockets, however, the lament that they let Lin get away might be more about him landing with the Knicks than losing him from their own roster. He could have ended up anywhere, but is now the starting point guard for the team sending the Rockets a first-round pick.

Morey did not say – because few would care and fewer would believe him – that the Rockets believed Lin would make it in the NBA, even when they cut him. They could not have predicted these past few games. Even the guy standing on the baseline during Rockets training camp that was mocked for comparing Lin to J.J. Barea (he’s still bitter about that, by the way) would not have said Lin was destined to become February’s Tim Tebow.

Morey had to leave it at praise for Lin and criticism for himself. Lost locally in the Linsanity, however, is that if the Rockets had kept Lin, he would be sitting between Terrence Williams and Hasheem Thabeet on the Rockets bench.

Before he decided to fall on his sword, Morey actually had been trying to explain the decision in twitterese:

“@jlin7 is a very good player but Linsanity was not happening here this year”

Lin would not have taken playing time from Goran Dragic, who has been outstanding. He certainly would not have supplanted Kyle Lowry. He was fortunate to land on a team desperate for anyone to play point guard, and even they sent him to the D-League. Word around the league spread that the Knicks were two days away from waiving Lin when he came off the bench a week ago, beginning this wild ride, and making his story even more remarkable if that’s possible.

The Rockets still should have kept him. If he spent the season on the bench and maybe filling in for an injury, the Rockets could have signed him on the cheap for three seasons. Somewhere in the next three seasons, he would have likely gotten that chance he would not have received this season, and as we have seen, he knows how to make the most of an opportunity.

With the Knicks, he found a Lin-Lin situation. Mike D’Antoni spreads the floor and runs pick-and-roll with the ball in his point guard’s hands. Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony have been out through most of Lin’s three-game rise. No one on the Knicks is close to being able to do the job.

Everything came together perfectly, which is how it goes with great stories like this. It could not have happened had Lin remained in Houston. Morey’s punishment will be the ambivalence between happiness for a kid that deserves it and disappointment to the damage he is doing to the pick New York will send to Houston.

He also could still make use of the much larger expiring contracts of Williams, Thabeet or Jonny Flynn that he kept on the roster when he released Lin.

Until then, Lin’s story does show that sports can still be wonderfully unpredictable. And if an opportunity should arise in the Rockets backcourt the way it did in New York – start the Flynnsanity!